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Saturday, March 16, 2019

An Eggs-tra Special Pi Day

I made quiche for dinner on Thursday—Pi Day—with Zoë's help, of course. I can't seem to do anything in the kitchen without her help (except when it comes to putting away the clean dishes, which is her actual kitchen job).

I cracked fifteen eggs into a bowl (because our family is somewhat ginormous) and let her whisk them up. I added some spices, some milk. She kept stirring while I went to check on how the pie crust was coming along. Because we were in a rush to get dinner on—Rachel had curtain call for her school musical at 5:00—I decided we'd make mini quiches in a muffin tin (which I would refer to a as a tart: a small "open pie" (with no crust on top), but definitions of pie vary wildly, it seems, so you might not refer to it as a tart simply because it's a miniature pie). Tarts bake much faster than pies!

Anyway, Rachel and Miriam were given the task of filling muffin cups with pie dough but, being the inexperienced pie makers that they are, they were taking forever to get it done. Miriam was working the dough so much in her hands it was warm and goopy by the time she pressed it into the muffin pan; Rachel was stretching her dough so paper-thin that she kept poking holes in it. So I showed them (again) how to quickly make a ball and flatten it and spread it in the muffin cup. We were all three rolling dough in our hands when I heard a slurping sound from behind us.

ssssssssssllluuuuuurrrp!

The slurper then let out a refreshing sigh and smacked their lips before slurping again.

ssssssssssllluuuuuurrrp!

I turned around to see who was slurping what at about the same time I remembered that I had left Zoë stirring a giant bowl full of raw egg, which she was currently dipping her slimy hands back into.

"Mmmmm!" she said, lifting her hands back up to her mouth so she could slurp some more egg from her fingers. "This is sour but good!"

I had purposely avoided the word poison because I didn't want to scare Zoë, but then I had to agree that, yes, raw eggs have been known to harbour salmonella, a bacteria that can cause food poisoning—which feels like a really bad tummy ache and often makes you be throw-up sick. Cooking eggs kills the bacteria, which is why we cook eggs (and also because...*gag*...slime). However, the bacteria is more often present on the shell rather than in the egg itself so she was probably just fine but also...stop.

"What about raw hard-boiled eggs?" Miriam fretted. "We eat those all the time!"

"So...those aren't raw," I said, cocking my head at her and speaking very slowly. "We boil them."

"But how?! They're still in their shell!"

"We boil them in their shell and then we peel them..."

"Oh, yeah!" she said.

Apparently we haven't made hard-boiled eggs in quite a long time (good thing hard-boiled egg season, I mean, Easter is coming up).

When Andrew got home (finally—right as we were supposed to be heading out the door for Rachel's play) I told him we had a 50/50 chance of Zoë either getting violently ill or beginning to exhibit impressive strength.

"What she'd do?" he joked. "Drink an egg?"

Well, pretty much exactly that, actually.

But so far she's been fine.

We eat raw cookie dough all the time (or at least, as often as we make cookies) so that's probably helped build up her immunity to such things (because that's totally how food poisoning works).